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Provinciality and Domestic Space in Colonial Bengal

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Provinciality and Domestic Space in Colonial Bengal 905 The Journal of Architecture Volume 18 Number 6 Living in the periphery: provinciality and domestic space in colonial Bengal Tania Sengupta The Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London, United Kingdom (Author’s e-mail address: [email protected]) This article focuses in detail on the domestic architecture of Indian town-dwellers within the context of provincial urbanisation in British colonial Bengal in the nineteenth century. It maps out the complex development of house-forms in provincial towns particularly in relation to rural-urban mobility and new social relationships brought about by the establish- ment of colonial governmental infrastructure in interior areas of the Bengal Province. Posit- ing these domestic forms to be as important as the much-studied ‘bungalow’ in terms of typological complexity as well as the range of social, political and economic processes that they represented, the article foregrounds them as being significant spatial models of colonial urban domesticity and modernity. It analyses the development of residential architecture in the light of the varied perceptions of provincial towns held by different constituencies among the urban population—such as European officers or Bengali rural immigrants— from a range of socio-economic classes. It argues that urban-rural mobility and the nature of changing but continuing connections between rural and urban locations created an incrementally growing provincial urban domestic architecture characterised by malleable notions of work, home and leisure spaces. This produced a typological flexibility and specific articulations of public and private domains within residential premises. The chief purpose of the paper is threefold: first, to make a case for Indian agency in the co-production of colonial architecture and urbanism; second, to argue the role of provincial spatial cultures and house forms as key bearers of colonial modernity; third, to explore colonial architectural history through on-ground mapping of everyday domestic spaces of individual families and varied social groups. Introduction gradually becoming an increasingly global product Popular and to a large extent scholarly imagination over the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. of colonial domestic architecture in India, up until It is also considered to be a quintessential hybrid the turn of the twenty-first century, has often been form epitomising transcultural processes—forged dominated by the ‘bungalow’ as an architectural by spatially crossing European ways of living with type. Brought into academic focus by seminal the exigencies as well as benefits of tropical life— studies such as Anthony D. King’s work from the and one that then underwent continuous formal late 1970s,1 the bungalow is seen as the classic colo- and semantic transformations in a range of contexts. nial domestic building, originating in India but Even though scholars such as King do acknowledge # 2013 The Author(s). Published by Taylor & Francis. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The moral rights of the named author(s) have been asserted. 1360-2365 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13602365.2013.853683 906 Living in the periphery: provinciality and domestic space in colonial Bengal Tania Sengupta that the architectural development of the bungalow incrementality and flexibility in residential architec- took place under the custodianship of both Euro- ture that arose from the nature of urban-rural inter- pean and Indian agency, in terms of typology, it face within the context. The architectural has often been projected as the single most signifi- developments of these buildings, in fact, were also cant building form produced within the Indian colo- closely linked with and in parts drew upon, the bun- nial context.2 galow typology itself: and in that sense all these While recognising the power of the bungalow together constituted the overall, rather hetero- idea in terms of its simultaneous ubiquity and local- geneous, but agile, spatial culture of provincial dom- isation, this article foregrounds certain other sites, esticity in colonial Bengal. I thus suggest that being processes and models of domesticity that were key bearers of a dynamic negotiation of change in equally part of the colonial spatial landscape. My a situation of political, economic and cultural flux, sites of engagements are the houses of Indian these provincial residential landscapes actively con- town-dwellers in provincial areas of Bengal during tributed towards a colonial modernity which is the nineteenth century. Such an interest marks and often attributed mostly to major urban centres and is part of a larger turn in recent post-colonial scholar- European agency, action and innovation. ship (since 2005), for example in the works of Jyoti The paper engages with smaller narratives of indi- Hosagrahar, Anoma Pieris and Swati Chattopad- vidual families within the larger developments in hyay, that focuses on the role of indigenous colonial provincial urbanisation in India. Rather agency as co-producers of colonial domestic land- than work merely with material housed in formal scapes and the ensuing spatial hybridities.3 Crucially, archives, I have personally studied and documented my paper further extends this conceptual thread into all the domestic premises mentioned in the paper the everyday residential architecture of the colonial through detailed first-hand measurement and draw- provincial ‘margins’ or ‘peripheries’. ings. I have also mapped the social histories of By studying the domestic spatial cultures and families and incremental development of house everyday lives which emerged as a result of particular forms through drawings, interviews, conversations, types of rural-urban movement that characterised a variety of formal and informal familial and govern- colonial urbanisation in interior areas of India, the mental documents, biographies, personal memoirs article argues that along with the European officer’s as well as literary texts of the period. or Bengali elite bungalow, various other types of upper-, middle- and lower-middle class houses in provincial towns also represented dynamic transcul- Colonial enterprise and provincial urbanisation tural and trans-local processes (such as those invol- Provincial urbanisation in nineteenth century Bengal ving urban and rural locations) and produced took place largely around colonial commercial newer paradigms of living, working and leisure. or administrative enterprise.4 This paper focuses More specifically, I make a case for the typological on the administrative towns, called zilla sadar 907 The Journal of Architecture Volume 18 Number 6 Figure 1. Bengal in British India and zilla sadar towns in lower Bengal. Figure 2. Cutcherry complex, Bankura. 908 Living in the periphery: provinciality and domestic space in colonial Bengal Tania Sengupta (or simply sadar in common parlance) which were ampur); and the transient mufassal [provincial] centres for the collection of agricultural revenue towns subject to the fast-moving flows of local pol- from vast hinterland regions. After defeating the itical developments (eg, Bakarganj). In the decades nawab of Bengal at the Battle of Plassey in 1757, following the Battle of Plassey, much of the the English East India Company, formerly operating nawabi infrastructure was dismantled. The land primarily as a trading agency, received from the reforms instituted by the East India Company in Moghul emperor in Delhi the diwani or rights to 1793 (the Permanent Settlement)6 saw the decline collect taxes from agricultural land in the province of a number of zamindari towns. Due to the shift of Bengal in 1765. In order to mobilise this, the ter- in the nature of British colonial interest from trade ritory was divided into revenue districts. In and to revenue administration and the increasing sup- around 1786, the post of the District Collector was pression of other European powers in the region, created, with substantial administrative power del- by the end of the eighteenth century most European egated to this level, and headquarter towns for factory towns also petered out. It is within such a each district were also clearly designated (Fig. 1). It context of other declining urban centres that zilla was this very territorial and operational framework sadar towns, centered on colonial governmental of revenue administration, in fact, that later functions, developed. They marked a new type of morphed into the political-administrative apparatus provincial urbanisation characterised by a more reg- of imperial government after 1858.5 The colonial ularly distributed network of towns.7 Most of the office (called the cutcherry) complex (Fig. 2)—con- towns in question (such as Krishnangar, Bankura, sisting of the revenue office, judicial and magisterial Burdwan, Suri, Jessore, Barisal, Midnapur), courthouses, land record rooms, treasury and however, had varying levels of pre-colonial inhabita- sometimes other buildings such as district jails and tion in the form of port or market settlements, mer- police headquarters—formed the nerve centre of chant clusters, existing villages or populated hamlets each provincial town around which the spaces of under the patronage of feudal landlords. Various everyday life grew, such as those discussed
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